Customer Reviews

The Good Soldier Svejk (Everyman's Library)

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I first read Hasek's masterpiece almost 30 years ago in a shorter and more Bowdlerized translation. The Cecil Parrot edition is, needless to say, far preferable (it even contains a wonderful introduction including a discussion of Czech profanity as compared to that in English) and I've read it again and again since it came out in 1974. Shelby Foote said somewhere that every year he reads Proust as a sort of literary vacation. About ever 2 or 3 years I reread Svejk to cleanse my literary palate and it's always as fresh and as enjoyable as it was the first time. The dialogue, the characters and the situations in Svejk are, stated simply, the funniest I've ever read. Many other books have many merits in this regard, but none has approached Hasek in the sustained hilarity over 500 pages or more. The secret policeman, Bretschneider, Chaplain Katz, Sergeant Major Vanek, Cadet Biegler, Balloun and Lt. Dub are all memorable characters in their own right, but when they interact the result surpasses anything I have ever read for comedy. The episode involving a character with writer's block during his drafting of a prayer to be recited while administering Mr. Kokoska's pharmaceutical powders for cow flatulence is a classic rivalling Aristophanes or Rabelais. [I realize that sentence is confusingly prolix, so please read the book; it will be worth your while.] The term "laugh out loud" is overused and abused these days, but The Good Soldier Svejk will have you disturbing family and friends with repeated guffawing any time you are reading it nearby. I can't give a text any higher recommendation.

Hasek died before he completed this book, a deep loss to all literature lovers, whether they are aware of it or not. Hasek was known for his excellent memory, which is reflected in SVEJK; for this book is perhaps as close to reality as any historical text can get. It has the haunting sense of reality which made Don Quixote what it is; and yet this book contains many of the most hillarious moments I've ever read. The authentic description of the people of the time, the world war from the simple soldier's viewpoint, and the eternal struggle between the desires of the nations and the wish for good life of the common people - all are represented in SVEJK, in a way no other book has ever been able to acheive. Svejk is a timeless non-hero, whom we cannot but simphatize. Hasek has succeeded in making the little, meaningless and even horrable moments of life of a soldier in the world war a poem of glory to the human spirit and to the simple man. Although Svejk was released from the service "for being an idiot", he is smarter than them all; We can tell who the real idiots are, represented in a way we all felt inside but never put to write. All that is acheived in a text that never once states someone's inner thoughts, like too many books of our time do, which emphesizes even more the great literary talent of Hasek. Although long, this book is read in one breath; And after you finished reading SVEJK, you cannot help but feel that perhaps life are, after all, worth living.

Surely one of the funniest novels of all time. As unforgettable, hilarious as Cervantes with all the bawdiness of Rabelais and the toilet humour of Swift, Hasek delivers a knock-out blow against the System, the Powers-That-Be, hypocrisy and military service. I wish I had a friend like Svejk (well, then again...), it would put things in perspective.

This is a difficult review because I love the stories and the translation is good overall, However: It seems like the Czech oaths and swears have been bawdlerized, although in the chapter in with Hungarians, the author has relented. There's a lot of old informal British terms used in dialogue, and I needed to look these up- some of these words might as well have remained in Czech. The text itself has German and Hungarian phrases which are usually (but not always!) translated in footnotes. On the other hand, Jalocová is repeatedly noted as juniper berry schnapps although context makes it obvious its a liquor. Basically, the translation needs more editing. I like Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za sv'tové války enough that I might get another translation...

This is an hilarious novel that was a forerunner to catch 22. We have the Good Soldier Svejk for WWI, Catch 22 for WWII, and to a lesser extent Forrest Gump for Viatnam.

Recommend to those wanting a good chuckle

If you like Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" , Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Joseph Heller's "Catch 22," or John Kennedy O'Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces," you'll be delighted to discover this obscure saga of "The Good Soldier Svejk."

I'm not sure if any of the above mentioned authors were aware of this interconnected tangle of Central European shaggy dog stories written just after WWI, but it sure feels like the mother lode for modern satire.

The author, born in Bohemia in 1883, was an eccentric writer who took up journalism, drinking, and wandering. Think of him as a Don Quixote lost somewhere in the Austrio-Hungarian empire. During WWI he was captured and spent years in Russian prison camps which had to have been a terrible ordeal.

Hasek's piercing sense of the absurd must have helped him survive a mountain of hardship because he came out on the other side with this picaresque tale of a reluctant soldier who is either the most inept person on earth or the most brilliant person we've ever produced. Svejk confounds everyone he encounters. Through wits or lack thereof, he survives the perils of war and wrath of his commanders. The wry imbecile manages to float down a seemingly endless stream of hilarious and insightful parables no matter what fate throws at him.

Svejk is the wise fool, the schlemiel, the coyote trickster that probably graces every culture with insights and pokes in the eye. He lurches and stumbles from one fiasco to the next, always vexing and insulting his apoplectic superiors. He gets lost behind the front lines, skirts and endless chain of well-wrought disasters and always finds something to drink at the end of the day.

The collected edition isn't an easy read in that it's very long and a bit of a ramble. But it's worth it. In many ways, this is a book about everything. You can mine it for meaning and metaphor, or just be entertained. It's old world and worldly--a massive send up of humanity caught at our best and worst with all our fancies and foibles gently laid bare.

I picked up "Svejk" in one of my odd Czech moods, and, despite the novel's length and meandering nature, I felt myself compelled to read continuously, occasionally forgetting to perform everyday tasks such as eating, sleeping, and going to work on time. I place it high on the list of top ten books I've ever read, not only because it's good (although it is *excellent*), but because there is no other book quite like it that exists. Hasek's encyclopedic, all-encompassing knowledge on everything from cooking to chemistry to munitions and mathematics makes his voice delightful to follow--I think I learned more from this single book than I did in my entire first year of college.

The novel is fairly thin on plot: it's World War I in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (and environs), and our good bonny soldier Svejk, skilled at acting the idiot, finds himself in a variety of situations which the war makes possible. The lunatic asylum, say, or the train. Or (in the longest single section of the book) wandering about the countryside, purportedly looking for his regiment, but actually getting farther and farther away from it. Svejk both frustrates and endears himself to his superiors--particularly Lt. Lukas, one of the only characters in the novel who is *not* hit with the satire stick on every other page. Through his actions, Svejk shows himself to be cleverer than anyone thinks he is, and carefully avoids being crushed by a corrupt and inefficient war machine.

What captivated me so much about "Svejk" is its tone. As other reviewers have said, it's hilarious: hardly a page goes by without a joke (tasteful or not) or wicked satire. But there is a very serious anti-war message (which has also been noted in previous reviews), and there are quite a few scenes of masterful characterization. Even though "Svejk's" emphasis is on humor, characters like the knowitall Cadet Beigler, the loud and clueless Lt. Dub, and Jurajda the occultist cook (to say nothing of Marek, Hasek's brilliant authorial stand-in) are at once so universal and individual that you feel like you know them--or would like to. The things the characters suffer in this novel--enemas, cholera, starvation, etc.--are severe and frightening, but the general attitude, given by Hasek, is that all these horrors can be laughed off! Life is serious, but the way you take it doesn't have to be.

Intermixed with the broad humor is the anti-war message. When Svejk kidnaps a dog (long story), for example, and struggles with it for dominance of the situation, the dog eventually gives in to Svejk. But Svejk sympathizes with the dog. "Every soldier's stolen from his home, too." While marching in Hungary, all that remains of the regiments that came before Svejk's 91st are scraps of dirty, bloodied clothing, hanging over ditches like thin soup skin. When he wants to, Hasek is just as capable of pulling out true empathy and pathos as Remarque in "All Quiet on the Western Front." And I can pay him no higher compliment than that. Remarque is also not nearly as funny as Hasek. :)

Since other reviewers have shared their favorite scenes, I'll share mine: Svejk steals (sort of) a chicken from the Hungarians, which results in aforementioned chicken effectively sucker-punching its owner. The scene where Svejk explains what happened to his Lieutenant is one of Hasek's great comic conversations: the two characters sound like they're talking about entirely different situations, when really they're talking about the same thing. Oh...and the cow flatulence scene ain't bad, either. A little gross, but definitely one of the most hilarious scenes in the novel :)

I haven't yet read this edition of the book, but I absolutely loved the Russian edition, which I have read and re-read countless times - the first time when I was maybe thirteen. I remember laughing at every other paragraph of the book, until my stomach hurt. Unbelievably, absurdly funny, but doesn't get tiring; the humor is never induced, trite, or repetitive.

The funniest book ever, although this humor is a kind of humor that makes you laugh where you could also cry and yell on top of your lungs at all the injustice of the world. Hasek had a choice to either write a very tragic work about all the horrible things the World War One had brought into the lives of millions of people or to look at it with humor and make light of it. Yet, it never feels like the writer is mocking the reality; it's one of those rare instances when you have a very tragic subject (I can hardly think of anything more tragic than the two world wars), but making light of it really works and makes you feel more optimistic about life and world.

Very entertaining story, my family loves it; and a very good edition with funny pictures. Recommend this book, it makes you laugh!

There's no getting around the fact that this book is funny and long, the latter characteristic often working might and main to detract from the former. Whether you muddle through to the end or not, it's a book you can dive into at any point and get anything from a chuckle to a snort to a few flecks of spit on the page.

Hasek's brilliant ability to recount funny anecdotes reminds me of Doris Kearns Goodwin's portrayal of Abe Lincoln in Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Our greatest president was as much a lover and chronicler of tales as Hasek, and it's a sure bet that growing up in backwoods Kentucky Lincoln commanded a pantheon of scatalogical tales on par with Hasek's that never made it into the standard Lincoln hagiographies.

Svejk will be greatly enjoyed when read hard on the heels of Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August or Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (Bloom's Guides).